


To the End of the Line (To Centuries Beyond)

by Lionfire42



Series: The Marvelous Brotherhood [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Evie is an ESO agent, Gen, Jacob becomes Captain America, Parental Abuse, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Sir Britain, Sort Of, Super Soldier Serum, given I'm still sort of bitter of Civil War, she still becomes an assassin, the Brotherhood still exists, the Templars are connected to Hydra, this is actually kind of cathartic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23830228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lionfire42/pseuds/Lionfire42
Summary: The rise and fall of Jacob Frye, the hero Sir Britain.OrThe one where the Frye twins are the Steve and Bucky of WW2, with all that implies.
Relationships: Evie Frye & Jacob Frye
Series: The Marvelous Brotherhood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1717084
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	To the End of the Line (To Centuries Beyond)

He's a scrawny thing as they grow up. A heart full of courage and lungs barely strong enough to keep him going. Full of righteous fury and desperation, born of a premature birth and his father's distance.

"Fool," his sister murmurs, dabbing at his bloody lip and swollen eyes, souvenirs from yet another fight in another alley, goaded by another taunt. The light is dim, the stove barely works enough to heat the warm, medicinal milk she presses into his bruised, skinny hands, hand so like her own, yet far weaker.

On his worst days, he resents her healthy body. They were born at the same time, but she'd come first, perfectly healthy. 

He came next, nearly dead and stealing his mother's life in a twisted exchange.

She is his twin though, and no matter how much she shakes her head and clucks her tongue at him, she is full of that same righteous fury all who have been cast aside have. A woman in a man's world.

Look down at her at your peril, because her stringent refusal to exchange her pants for skirts mean she has a greater range of movement to kick you in the gnads and clock you in the face. 

* * *

  
  


Their father dies in the first war. Sort of.

He came home yes, but his mind, his soul had died, trampled in the trenches.

He doesn't drink, doesn't rage and rave like some other veterans do in the streets. He becomes quieter and quieter, and every tightening coil of rage and pain until he pops.

Jacob wonders if he was worse before they came to live with him in his small flat.

(Years, decades later, he discovers that yes, he was worse, and for all his faults, he was still just a man. A man who sent his children away, knowing he was a ticking bomb, knowing how volatile he could become, living in a neverending nightmare. A man, who tried to protect his children by sending them to his late wife's elderly parents, who sent money and medicine to try to prolong his in-laws lives.

A father who, when he could no longer deny the truth, fought his demons for the chance, for the right, to raise his children, and when he was on the brink of becoming them, fled, knowing they would chase him and leave those he loved safer.

Jacob Frye reads his father's letters and diaries, and finally, finally begins to forgive.  He has too much regret already.)

Usually this rage will be released in an abrupt hurling of a book or a mug at a wall. Other times, is the sudden tightness of his voice as he excuses himself from the table, strides into his room, closes the door and punches the brick wall by his bed for hours. Occasionally it's him staying in bed for days on end, further stressing his poor daughter, who does what respectable jobs she can from sympathetic neighbors in order to try to keep both men in her life alive.

The final time Jacob ever sees it happen is the final time he sees his father.

He's taking out his temper, his inextinguishable rage from constantly being bedridden on his father. He's yelling himself hoarse, his beleaguered lungs straining more and more to provide his thin blood with oxygen and his father is winding up, tighter and tighter and he's ignoring the signs and--

Suddenly, Evie is on the floor, a large bruise already appearing on her face.

The room is silent. Ethan Frye's blank eyes begin to clear and slowly fill with horror as he looks from his hand to his daughter slowly getting up (never staying down, never), keeping herself between her other half and her sire.

Their father doesn't say a word. He slowly turns, shakily gathers his coat, his wallet and a bag, that he fills with a few clothes. He picks up his hat and slowly lurches out the door.

It closes with a quiet, definitive click.

* * *

  
  


The twins are twenty years old and war has broken out once again.

The country is still raw from the last war. Buildings are still settling into their rebuilt frames and new brickwork to replace the ones that had lasted centuries, only to be blown to bits by falling bombs.

"I've been drafted," Evie breathed in his ear as they lay on next to each other on his ratty bed, listening to their neighbor's radio playing the latest patriotic tune hailing King and Country.

"...what?"

"Of a sort," she murmurs. "There was a woman at the library, a regular. It turns out she's been watching me for weeks. Said I make a good fit for British Intelligence." She smiles wryly. "Apparently the noble folk call it the 'Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare', so it's  _ perfect _ for a  _ woman _ ."

Jacob laughs so hard he causes himself a coughing fit.

  
  
  


Her being a woman is not the reason he stands in line at the draft office, clutching his papers. Evie can protect herself. But he can't stay in bed whilst there's the chance they send his other half (his better half, Evie would snark) somewhere that he can't follow. 

They were meant to be side by side, forever. Poverty and sickness had never stopped them. The Frye Twins were indomitable together, be that scrapping up money or fighting whatever group of dog-kicking fools had earned Jacob's ire.

They deny him, of course. Even in a country seemingly determined to grab every warm body, they won't take his.

So he tries again. And again.

Evie knows of course. She doesn't approve. But she knows him like she knows herself and knows he needs this--she won't stop him.

  
  


"Why do you try so hard to fight?" An old man with a German accent asks him after he's been scolded and threatened by yet another draft officer and been kicked out to the mocking chuckles and pitying looks of other, stronger men.

How can he explain the crushing fear of loneliness looming in the distance, the horror of a life of possible solitude when he's never been alone since conception? The fear that his twin may not come back, or worse, come back the same way their father did? The anger at his helplessness, the pride he feels for his sister, the longing for a destiny that he knows is greater than the one he forsees?

"Someone has to," is what he goes with instead.

The old man smiles.

* * *

  
  


What Erskine describes is fantastical, impossible, ridiculous and possibly deadly.

Jacob is immediately on board.

"This will hurt," Erskine warns as they strap him into the coffin-like machine and eject him with pale blue chemicals.

  
  
  


It really, really,  _ really _ bloody hurts.

He emerges a head taller than his twin and rippling with muscle. Men feel his chiseled chest and bulging biceps, murmuring to each other in awe.

She pushes her way to the front, ignoring caustic glares at her audacity. She clasps his arm and smirks mischievously. "Looks like you hit a growth spurt, brother."

His straightened and dazzling new teeth gleam in the spotlights of the lab. "Jealous, sister?"

"Hardly," she scoffs, trying to cover the glimmer of tears welling in her eyes at the sight of her healthy, happy  _ alive _ sibling. "Muscles wither, dear brother, but I was still first."

"By four minutes! That doesn't even--"

Gunshots ring out.

* * *

Erskine is dead, the formula to creating a thousand great knights is lost with him.

The higher-ups are furious. They debate his fate in front of him, acting as if he isn't even there. To him, he is a low-blood expensive pet project that they can never recreate. He has little to no formal training, comes from  _ Whitechapel _ , of all places...he is socially worthless.

  
  
  


On one hand, they give him a knighthood for his service to the Empire--Good job they seem to say. You didn't die the ethically dubious dangerous experiment in service to the country.

On the other hand, they dress him up in a cheap costume designed to look like a modern day knight, color it red, white and blue, and use him as a propaganda symbol.  _ Sir Britain _ they call him, putting his cowled face on posters encouraging people to buy war bonds and sign up for service. He stars in commercials, gives pre-written speeches on the radio.

He hates it. He hates it even more when they fly him out near the front and have him pose with  _ real _ troops, like his very presence will help fill empty stomachs and block bullets.

It's on one of these trips near occupied Poland that he hears more about the about the mysterious Hydra group, who murdered Erkstine, who controls the Nazis. He hears about whispers of another group that controls even them, one centuries old. He hears about how an entire regiment is captured by Nazis wielding futuristic, Asimov weapons.

He hears about the three ESO agents were with the regiment and how while one was found dead, the other two, a Polish man and an English woman, are missing, presumably captured.

He demands to know the woman's name, feeling the twisting in his gut that already  _ knows _ . They hem and haw before they finally admit her identity.

Evie Frye.

* * *

He doesn't know how to fly a plane.

Luckily, the angry Scottish mechanic, fired for having dared point out the head engineer was letting shoddy work go through, for speaking up despite being a woman, does.

"Names Agnes Macbean," she yells over the racket of the old two-seater's engine. "Ain't this a way to go out, eh? Sticking it to the Nazis!"

* * *

It is embarrassingly easy to sneak into the Hydra base. He's so much faster and stronger than the average man now, and the brass knuckles certainly help.

Most of the men he finds imprisoned but Evie isn't with them.

Instead, he finds her in a lab straight out of a pulp novel, full of blinking lights and needles with strange chemicals.

(Nazis and military officers would say they decided to experiment with a version of the serum on her because it worked so well on Jacob, and genetically speaking, there was no one on earth as similar to him than his twin.

Jacob and the men who were imprisoned would say they used her first because it was she who rallied them into rousing chants of defiance, who, when backhanded by a sneering soldier, proceeded to blind him with her own spit blood, knee him in the groin, and headbutt him unconscious.)

She's only half-conscious when he pulls her from the chair, but she's still a crack shot and able to hold her own beside him as they fight through soldiers, elites, and a strange, powerful Hydra officer known only as Roth.

* * *

Afterwards, the higher-ups give him training and his own elite squad. It's as much a punishment as it is a reward: he's no expert fighter, and what he's allowed to pick isn't what's considered the cream of the crop.

To him, it's perfect.

He gets three ESO agents: Evie and two men: one, a Ned Wynert, is rumored to have run a corner of England's black market prior to the war breaking out. The other, Robert Topping is a fast-talking former bookie and carnie, with a penchant for ridiculous hats and getting through nearly any lock.

Agnes is brought on as the team's engineer and mother hen and she quickly gains some assistants in the form of former street urchins: a clumsy lad named Nigel and a sly, cunning young code-cracker named Clara.

They get a discharged soldier named Abberline, who is as honorable as he is resilient, and old as he is tenacious. A couple of brothers, Billy and Dennis Strum, children of Jamaican immigrants and expert riflemen. Durand Boucher, a beast of a Frenchman with delicate fingers and talent for explosions.

They're the diamonds in the rough, the unappreciated and overlooked. Some, jokingly, mockingly, call them the Knights of the Crooked Table. 

Jacob Frye, Sir Britain himself, calls them his Rooks, to his sister's audible dismay.

* * *

Mission after mission, fight after fight, the Rooks succeed. Bases are raised, no-man lands taken. Sir Britain is a whirlwind on the battlegrounds, wielding pistols and knuckles, his arms covered in gauntlets made with a rare, unbreakable metal and painted with the flag of the Motherland. Evie is at his back, sometimes with her own pistol and throwing knives, other times crouched in a tree for days on end, guiding and clearing the way with her sniper rifle. Robert wears such bright clothing that he's practically invisible when he forgives them to sneak into enemy territory, Ned is able to self-talk and turn many a soldier with the promise of money for intelligence. Agnes can turn even military rations palatable, and hotwire Nazi trucks with a speed the belies her large frame. The brothers are crack shots at impossible distances, Durand, capable of turning nearly anything into a bomb. Abberline is a long-suffering sort who gets along swell with Evie, and has a poorly hidden soft-spot for Clara and Nigel.

They are an unstoppable team.

But Hydra grows ever more powerful. A man by the name Red Skull looms like a spector, guiding the war like one would a chess match. The elites of Nazi appear with incredible armor and weapon that are difficult to defeat, nearly impossible to reverse engineer, and glow an insidious gold. 

Jacob is grim, but he isn't worried. He has his team, he has his fists. He has his twin. Everything else can be overcome.

And then...there's the train.

The Hydra weapons. The elite soldiers guarding the dangerous cargo. Him nearly getting killed, only to be saved as Evie fires with unerring accuracy.

The golden beam nearly tearing the train in two, the force sending his sister tumbling out.

Trying to reach for her, straining as she dangles from the side of the train over the mountain pass--

The snap as the bar gives way.

And the sight of his sister, his twin, his other half, tumbling like an errant leaf into the snow, hundreds of feet below, becoming nothing more than a black dot, then disappearing altogether, like she never existed.

He doesn't remember if he screamed her name. He probably did.

(Honestly, he had probably stood there gaping in horror instead of doing something, instead of lunging after her, following after like he'd done all their lives. Like he should have done. Like it was supposed to be.

He thinks this because there are many moments where he should have said something, where he wants to  _ scream _ ...and doesn't, too overwhelmed, too broken:

The first time he woke up in a new century, taken from his frozen coffin by a mysterious Brotherhood.

The first time he realizes that everyone he knows is dead.

The time when he goes to the British History Museum and discovers monuments and exhibits to him...and only him. His friends, his family, his Rooks, his sister...regulated to footnotes.

And of course the moment that he fights a deadly assassin on a rooftop in the dead of night, one who killed a member of the Brotherhood he will call his own. An assassin just as strong and as fast as he. An assassin who goes by many monikers the world over, the bogeywoman of the Creed:

The Creed Killer. The Winter Huntress.

Well, no. That's a lie. He does say something.

In that moment where he fights this impossibly skilled assassin of assassins, when he struggles against the strength and tricks contained within her left, silver arm. When he knocks her mask off, and the face looking back at his is achingly familiar and as improbably young as his own, covered in a legion of freckles and holding artic blue eyes in a too blank face.

He does speak then.

_ "...Evie?" _

  
  
  
  
  


_ "...who on earth is Evie?" _ )

* * *

The eventual battle with Roth, with Red Skull is a blur. He fights with that same raging fury in his heart, but he still feels...empty. Cold. Even seeing Roth try to harness the power of the mysterious golden artifact, only for it to overwhelm him and wreath him in ethereal flames draws only a grim satisfaction from him.

It's when he is behind the controls of the futuristic plane holding legions of bombs capable of turning all of America to ash that his thoughts crystallize with abrupt clarity. 

One Frye died to the cold and ice. It's only fitting that the other should as well.

Or blazing fire, should the bombs go off on impact.

Either way, he'll be going home.

The water rushes in, the cabin shudders and he welcomes the piercing darkness with a smile on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> This would not leave me alone. I replayed Syndicate, and I remembered how much I loved the Frye Twins. 
> 
> Let me know if you'd like a WinterSoldier!Evie to go with this! I have some other one-shots in mind too: Connor as a Wolfish!Hulk, Elise as Black Widow and Arno as Hawkeye. I'm torn between Altair as Fury and Ezio as Ironman or vice versa. Maybe Desmond as a sort of Spider-man...


End file.
